Manushya Puthiran

BIO

Manushya Puthiran is a contemporary poet in Tamil and considered to be one among the few titans alive, in term of quantity of quality work and the impact that he has on the world of Tamil Poetry. He is one among the few who are active in writing poetry ever since beginning in late eighties. He is also a cultural activist and routinely takes part in media discussion on various societal and political matters; he also writes column in leading magazines and dailies, representing a major radical voice engaged in dialogue in contemporary society, overall.

Manushya Puthiran has been honored with numerous awards and prizes, such as Sanscrithi Sammaan(2002) national award and Canada Tamil Ilakkiya Thottam award (2011). Through a survey conducted among contemporary readers, The India Today magazine rated Manushya Puthiran as one among the top 10 most influential people of Tamil Nadu in the year 2011 and 2010.

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Manushya Puthiran was born as S. Abdul Hameed on 15 March 1968 in Thuvarankurichi, which is a small town in Tiruchirappalli District, Tamil nadu. He started his writing career at the young age of 16, by writing poems in “mana osai”, a journal run by the supporters of the Marxian philosophy. One of the foremost and major contemporary Tamil writers of his times, writer Sri. Ranagarajan (alias Sujatha), who was also an admirer of Manushya Puthiran’s poetry played a crucial role in putting him on spot, which slowly brought him to lime light.

His parents and family member being very supportive, he completed his schooling in private as he wished. Later he went on to receive a Bachelor’s degree in Arts and a Master’s degree in Mass Communication.

Later, he moved to Negercoil to join the team of Kalachuvadu as an editor, which was emerging as a leading literary magazine. After working there for few years, sometime in year 2000 he moved to Chennai to found his own literary magazine and publishing firm namely Uyirmmai, -which are being successfully managed by him till date.

Through Uyirmmai, which is one of the largest publishing firm in Tamil, he has introduced several new poets and writers, alongside showcasing the original and translations of established contemporary writers. On the second death anniversary of the famous Tamil writer Sujatha in 2010, he also founded the Sujatha Awards for literary excellence, in collaboration with The Sujatha Trust.

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Manushya Puthiran drew his early inspirations from Poet. Sukumaran, who shared similar political views and was also writing in related magazines.

As an unusual trend for a contemporary modern writer, his poems are comparable to the divine poetries of the era of bhakthi movement oscillating the depths of the agony of loneliness and to the joy of companionship.

His poems often driven by the very mood of elation. Elation of ideology, elation of self-pity, elation of melancholy, the elation of love, elation of helplessness and the elation of loneliness. Which, his language harvests through words that are free flooding akin to the emotions themselves. His poetics is driven by emotions that are often open and direct. His style of aesthetics raw and powerful and somewhat comparable to romanticism of renaissance. Though packed with primal and ancient emotional angst, on the other hands, his handling of language is undiminishing, endowing contemporariness and freshness overall. His style of language use is concise and deep and a proof of master craftsmanship.

The ‘New Poetry’ in Tamil inherited its tradition and style from the pioneering ‘free verse’, of the literary giant Bharathi, who himself drew his inspirations from Shelley and Whitman in English. This new style of poetics being chained down Through Ku.Pa. Rajagoplan and Na. Pichamoorthy to the new generations, the ‘Modern Poetry’ movement was initiated by Ka.Na. Subramniam who created the modern tamil poetry by adapting the conceptions and definitions from the very Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot themselves, who were the fathers and pioneers of the Modern New Poetry in history. In some sense the works of Manushya Puthiran are true examples of world class Modern Poetry that both of these giants idealized and adored.

Manushya Puthiran is one of the few figures among Modern poets, who implemented the narration of self-utterance and diary writing styles to its fullest potentials, which are themselves the most successful styles of narrations in history of poetry. His poems often are never distant, neither mute nor silent but rather personal, loud and imminent. They always succeed in igniting an immediate dialogue with the reader. Intimate feelings and secrets poured with no hindrance or hesitation, grasp the reader by his wrist, at once. Lines possessed by amorphous and molten elation, rawness, and immediacy make them breathing and living. Capsuling the angst of separation, loneliness, melancholy or sadness; boiling and bubbling emotions crafted in razor sharp tongue, discharge the contents directly into reader like fierce full shrapnel. Probably this makes the Manushya Puthiran’s creative world distinct and an intimate, which is also the hall mark.

Invigorated by bitterness Manushya Puthiran’s poems dialogue and expose the dupe, deceive and pretenses in relationships. They also showcase the angst of loneliness, abandonment, dejection or a tragedy. Fully exposed flooded with emotion that are open, frank and carried by the rushing language, in some sense his poems are comparable and classifiable to that of Lorca and Neruda, Brecht or Mayakovsky.

With all the helplessness, bitterness, protest, -the underlying thread of sanity, fully ripe compassion and the hidden but invisible shred of optimism and hope graces them all with a fine dust of magic. Making them very palatable, eternally sweet and devouring. Undoubtedly, his poems represent the finest of the contemporary world poetry and in any standards, Manushya Puthiran is one of the finest among the poets of the 21st century.